I know what I am. I’m the magic man.

(SPOILERS) I suspect it’s no coincidence that my favourite
comic book adaptations tend to be ones that don’t pay an awful lot of heed to
staying within standardised genre limits, be it Tony Stark out of the suit with
a kid sidekick of Iron Man Three, the
altered states romping of Hulk or now
the pan-fried head trip of Legion. Ironically,
the latter was co-produced with Marvel Television, whose Netflix shows have
been on the determinedly moribund side. Indeed, Legion feels like a breath of fresh air in comparison, if perhaps
lacking that certain something that would truly send it into the stratosphere.

That’s partly because, however stylistically daring Noah
Hawley’s series is, however beguilingly confused the mind of its protagonist
becomes, and however evidently not in
thrall it is to offering straightforward superheroics (of which there are very
little), Legion definitely does conform to the genre’s limitations
of defined supervillainy and quantified narrative devices and solutions. I don’t
especially care that David Haller (Dan Stevens) is Charles Xavier’s son (and
even less whether or not Patrick Stewart will cameo), or that Big Bad the
Shadow King is an established entity of comic lore; I’m only really interested
in how Hawley uses the character as a leaping off point to do his own thing.
And when he’s doing his own thing,
more often than not, Legion is a
great show, firing on all cylinders in a not dissimilar fashion to Joss Whedon
series of – now – old (say, the last couple of seasons of Angel), but with added visual aplomb. As such, the series is much
more interesting when exploring David’s uncertain mindscape than when it settles
into the well-ploughed terrain of a card-carrying evil mutant with standard
nefarious motivations.

Hawley has namechecked a host of inspirational elements,
from David Lynch to Pink Floyd (Sydney Barret, actually using Floyd in the last
episode) to Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind, to Terrence Malick to Breaking
Bad (inevitable?) to, in terms of design aesthetic, “a 1964 Terence Stamp movie” and
Hannibal (a show I didn’t care for at all, apart from its palette), and you
can see those elements, but they tend to evidence that there isn’t anything
fundamentally altered or askew in Legion’s
construction; it’s all surface trappings. As talented as Hawley is in composing
his narratives, it rather makes you think in retrospect that inserting a UFO
into the last season of Fargo wasn’t
a wild and whacky idea but rather his idea of what a wild and whacky person’s idea
would be.

That’s why I keep coming back to Whedon when I think of this
show, both in terms of its broad, cartoonish characterisations (albeit
fortunately absent the more egregious smart-mouthed pop culture quipping) and
core Scooby gang of heroes, but also in its very measured, calculated approach
to twists and reveals that, no matter how much they exert a grip, never truly
take you out of the box, even when they apparently have; you’ll always end up
back in a safe place, even when you think there’s been a game changer (albeit,
the final season of Angel comes very
close in places and is certainly something one couldn’t go too far wrong in
aiming for). There’s a comfortable,
finite quality to the design of their TV universes that is only underlined by
limitations of scale and budget (Legion’s
world is a very limited one, which works like gangbusters when trapped within the
confines of a mental institution, less so when trying to depict the environment
outside).

One can expect too much of a show of course, and the
willingness of Legion to set itself
“out there” initially was inevitably, I think, going to result in some
backtracking. It needs to bear some resemblance to the Marvel brand from which
it has spun off, so if Hawley had really intended to go the “full Lynch” I
doubt if he’d ever have got the green light. So too, there’s no mistaking what
we have here for the philosophical probing of the oft-vilified Damon Lindelof,
or any kind of interrogation of the nature of society and one’s place in it,
such that when I’ve seen comments invoke The
Prisoner I’m wondering if they’ve only seen the remake (even in terms of
design, the comparison is far off the mark).

Even Legion’s take on mental illness fully embraces a
frizzy, pop aesthetic, ready to discard and embrace it as the mood takes the
writers (in the penultimate episode, David’s rational mind appears to cast off
doubts of his afflicted state with the boxing up of the Shadow King, but it
would make for a very pedestrian subsequent season if he becomes entirely
stable, particularly since Legion’s
main appeal thus far has been the untapped hollows of his mind). A better
yardstick, both in terms of losing one’s marbles and design, might be Theodore
J Flicker’s The President’s Analyst,
but to pass muster in that regard, Legion
would have to take on board a satirical element, and thus far there’s scant
evidence the show is about anything beyond its ability to pull narrative rugs
and stage wildly invigorating dance routines/musical set pieces.

Cary: You have a very large amygdala.

David: Thank you.

And yet, many times this over the tired, bloated Netflix
shows. From episode to episode (and I admit I watched this over a couple of
nights, rather than on first broadcast, so it may not have percolated in quite
the manner it did for those who saw it the “traditional” way), Legion continued to surprise and
impress, even if was mostly on a stylistic level – something that should never
be underestimated, especially when style is so often a conservative thing on
TV, even at its most luxuriant – flipping in the first episode from David’s
interior, medicated state to the reveal of Sydney’s particular skillset and then
providing one of those Escher-like potentialities that, alas, only go so far (“This is your memory of the day you called
the hospital. Not the actual day, I’m inside your memory”), as Syd warns
him inside his mind. Like Episode Six, where the Shadow King is controlling the
state of play, returning us to the opening passages of the first episode,
there’s a virtuosity on display here only diffused by our gradually becoming
fully cognisant of the limitations of how crazy Hawley’s willing to get. Which
is, no further than this being a game played. When a character asks “Could we still be in David’s mind?” in
the fourth episode, the answer is: this show’s not really willing to turn into
the season closer of Twin Peaks for
its entire duration, so no.

In terms of characterisation, then, the heightened quality
goes to emphasise how little substance there is to anyone, as opposed to Fargo, where the broad strokes can be
underplayed and so given more resonance. Rachel Keller made a big impact in a
relatively small role in Fargo, but
here, after the first episode, Syd doesn’t really say or do all that much to make
an impact; instead, she tends to be defined by David. It’s all downhill from
discovering her superpower. Likewise, Ptonomy (Jeremie Harris) does little of
consequence after the second episode, besides firing a machine gun. Cary (Bill
Irwin) and Kerry (Amber Midthunder) Loudermilk are much more consistently
effective due to their interdependent relationship, one that feels like the
most Whedonesque thing here, particularly when ructions develop, but they’re
still defined by their visual sense (Kerry fighting heavies while Cary mimes
her actions in the lab, playing mental games as patients in Clockworks). Better
is Melanie (Jean Smart) and her distress over the inability of Oliver (Jermaine
Clement) to remember her, his wife.

Oliver: May I introduce you to my friend, Jules
Verne.

Indeed, Oliver’s astral hangout, and method of getting out
and about by means of a virtual diving suit, is the most appealingly batty
conceit in the show, such that, as with David’s undefined discord early on, the
series deflates a little once he becomes corporeal once more. Clement is
wonderful, of course, encouraged to indulge both his penchant for singing
(notably in the final episode, when he takes off after a rendition of If I Ruled the World) and his ear for
the absurd (“Too bad” he comments on
being told bras are back, before recovering with “How do you feel about beat poetry?”) and even precisely underplaying
the tragic beat of remembering Melanie just as the Shadow King is about to take
possession of him. If the series is going to maintain a level of safety in not really pushing its capacity to go the
full Lynch, it could use more of this kind of goofiness of ideas and visuals.

David: And you’re British.

David’s Rational Mind:
Like I said, I’m your rational mind.

Stevens’ performance is masterfully modulated, of course,
although we’re occasionally led by the nose when it’s entirely unnecessary
(does he really need to start wearing
black when the Shadow King is assuming an influence in the fifth episode?), and
the bugs crawling through the fruit are very well-worn “evil under the skin”
cliché. The “revelations” concerning his adoption (Professor X) and the Shadow
King never really take on a compelling quality, any more than the standard
motivational subplot concerning the threat to his sister (Katie Aselton). It’s
lucky then, that much of the unfolding of the reveal elements occurs in the
sixth and seventh episodes, set mostly within the mental landscape of the
Shadow King’s version of Clockworks, and that the means of exposition (David conversing
with his rational mind, laid out on an animated blackboard) are pocked with
knowing humour (“Boo-hoo. Focus”
instructs his rational mind at one point. “You’re
right... I am pretty. I am loved” responds David).

Aside from Mackenzie Gray’s permed Tom Waits-alike The Eye,
the expressly monstrous aspects of Legion
failed to really hold my attention, certainly not in terms of offering the
stuff of nightmares. “The Devil with
Yellow Eyes”, announced almost as soon as the show starts but revealed a
little later, just isn’t that scary, looking rather like a Sin City reject by way of the obese vampire from Blade, while the picture book cut-out The Angriest Boy in the World, The Babadook by way of Frank Sidebottom,
is similarly derivative and lacking in a real frisson.

On the other hand, when Aubrey Plaza is revealed as the
embodiment of the Shadow King, leading to such sequences as her dancing around
her office to Nina Simone’s I Feel Good
or – in possibly the standout passage of the season –menacing the hospital
inmates a la Tim Burton meets Robert Smith in silent movie fashion, complete
with caption cards, Legion shifts
into the positively inspired (but again, it’s the kind of inspired that gave us
Buffy’s Hush or Once More (With
Feeling)). The fake reality is an oft-used trope, to the extent that it
might be labelled a tired device rather than the relatively fresh one it one
was (say, around when The X-Files
used it in Field Trip), so
interesting things being done with it tend to stand out.

Final episodes as epilogues can be a relief when a show is
as highly strung as Game of Thrones.
I’m not sure it succeeds so much here. Some of the visuals are nice (the tree
of soldiers), but the decision to switch focus completely to a character not
seen since the opener (Hamish Linklater’s Clark), now with burns over 40% of
his body following the swimming pool incident, is the sort of perspective
switch Lindelof might have pulled after a whole season of Lost. It’s mildly interesting, but it smacks more of a
self-conscious device than something equipped with sincerity, substance or
intent to really explore a “bad guy”, despite David’s protestations that he
wants to avoid a war and Hawley’s desire not to “send a message that all conflict can only be resolved through battle”.
As such, I mostly had in mind the first Austin
Powers’ depiction of the family of an evil henchman having to deal with his
offhand death.

Added to which, David’s abduction in the mid-credits scene
just felt silly. Rather than a cliffhanger, it left a taste of anti-climax and
probably would have been better cut out completely, really. Season One
certainly delivered the goods visually, then (and in the case of the Cloud Atlas-inspired exploding kitchen,
several times on repeat, to get its money worth), and musically (one wonders
how much a soundtrack album including the likes of The Who, Serge Gainsbourg,
The Rolling Stones, Jane’s Addiction, Thomas Dolby, Pink Floyd and T-Rex would
cost to licence, which probably explains why only Jeff Russo’s incidental music
is available). I’m mildly intrigued at what Hawley has in store for the second run,
but I’m also wary that he hasn’t now established too level a playing field for an
ostensibly antic series, and that it may lack the potential to truly surprise.
I’ll happily keep coming back for the musical numbers, but I’m nursing the hope
it can be something more than that.

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